A moderately risk averse person may turn down a 50/50 gamble that either results in her winning $200 or losing $100. Such behaviour seems rational if, for instance, the pain of losing $100 is felt more strongly than the joy of winning $200. The aim of this paper is to examine an influential argument that some have interpreted as showing that such moderate risk aversion is irrational. After presenting an axiomatic argument that I take to be the strongest case for (...) the claim that moderate risk aversion is irrational, I show that it essentially depends on an assumption that those who think that risk aversion can be rational should be skeptical of. Hence, I conclude that risk aversion need not be irrational. (shrink)

Orthodox expected utility theory imposes too stringent restrictions on what attitudes to risk one can rationally hold. Focusing on a life-and-death gamble, I identify as the main culprit the theory’s Linearity property, according to which the utility of a particular change in the risk of a bad outcome is independent of the original level of risk. Finally, I argue that a recent non-standard Bayesian decision theory, that does not have this property, handles risky gambles better than the orthodox theory.

Philosopher Peter Sjöstedt-H’s Noumenautics traverses the mindscape of metaphysics, nihilism and psychedelic phenomenology. It navigates through subjects such as the sentience of cells, the constrictions of consciousness, the metaphysics of might, the magic of mushrooms, the narcotics of Nietzsche, and the neologism of neo-nihilism – the last of which may itself cause flashbacks. -/- Tracing the fall of western morality through Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the book descends deeper still into a metaphysics further upheld by Henri Bergson and Alfred North (...) Whitehead. This collection of essays and notes provides a most idea-provoking, educational, and original piece of literature for the thoughtful lay-reader and specialist alike. -/- Contents: I. Philosophy and Psychedelic Phenomenology II. Myco-Metaphysics: a Philosopher on Magic Mushrooms III. Psychedelics and Empiricism IV. Bergson and Psychedelic Consciousness V. Vertexes of Sentience: Whitehead and Psychedelic Phenomenology VI. Antichrist Psychonaut: Nietzsche and Psychedelics VII. Neo-Nihilism: the Philosophy of Power VIII. The Teutonic Shift from Christian Morality: Kant – Schopenhauer – Nietzsche IX. Schopenhauer and the Mind X. The Will to Power. (shrink)

An exploration into the reciprocity between Nietzsche's drug use and his philosophy.

A mildly chronological overview of the philosophers who may have been inspired by the use of psychoactive chemicals, inc. Plato, de Quincey, Davy, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, James, Bergson, Benjamin, Jünger, Paz, Marcuse, Sartre, Foucault; and a mention of the Outsight project. -/- This article was based on a talk given for the University of Exeter Philosophy Society and at the ICPR2016 conference.

This public article presents three arguments for the plausibility of panpsychism: the view that sentience is a fundamental and ubiquitous element of actuality. Thereafter is presented a brief exploration of why panpsychism has been spurned. The article was commissioned by High Existence. -/- – Introduction – 1. The Genetic Argument – 2. The Abstraction Argument – 3. The Inferential Argument – Why Panpsychism is Spurned – End Remarks.

Through Alfred North Whitehead’s metaphysics, the Philosophy of Organism, it will be argued that psychedelic experience is a vertical, lateral and temporal integration of sentience.

Published in 1950: The Penseés is a collection of philosophical fragments, notes and essays in which Pascal explores the contradictions of human nature in psychological, social, metaphysical and - above all - theological terms. Mankind emerges from Pascal's analysis as a wretched and desolate creature within an impersonal universe, but who can be transformed through faith in God's grace.

Conspectus of part of John R. Smythies' Analysis of Perception (1956). It presents a summary of his ideas on phenomenal space – the space of one’s imagination, dreams, psychedelic experiences, somatic sensations, visions, hynagogia, etc. – and its relation to physical space.

Conspectus of part of John R. Smythies' Analysis of Perception (1956). It presents a summary of his ideas on phenomenal space – the space of one’s imagination, dreams, psychedelic experiences, somatic sensations, visions, hynagogia, etc. – and its relation to physical space.

A Conspectus of A. N. Whitehead's Metaphysics .

My object in this paper is to suggest a few reflections on some themes in Bentham's work which others as well as I have noted, without perhaps developing them as fully as might with advantage be done. There will be nothing like full development in the limited compass of what is said here, but what is said may at least indicate possible directions for further exploration. The greater part of the paper will be concerned with the notion of natural authority; (...) but I want to begin by taking a broader, though no doubt rather superficial, view of the role in Bentham's thinking of the concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘the natural’. (shrink)

The object of this article is to examine, with the work of Jeremy Bentham as the principal example, one strand in the complex pattern of European social theory during the second half of the eighteenth century. This was of course the period not only of the American and French revolutions, but of the culmination of the movements of thought constituting what we know as the Enlightenment. Like all great historical episodes, the Enlightenment was both the fulfilment of long-established processes and (...) the inauguration of new processes of which the fulfilment lay in the future. Thus the seminal ideas of seventeenth-century rationalism realized and perhaps exhausted their potentialities in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The ideas with which this article is concerned, however—conveniently grouped and labelled as the ideas of utilitarianism—only began to achieve systematic development in these later decades of the eighteenth century. Within that period—during the first half and more of Bentham's long life—attempts to apply those ideas to the solution of social problems met largely with failure and frustration. Yet unrealized potentialities remained, the realization of which was reserved for a time when the world of the philosophes no longer existed. The movements for social and political reform which have played so large a part in modern history since the French Revolution may be judged in widely differing ways; but whatever the verdict, these movements surely cannot be understood without due consideration of that part of their origins which lies in eighteenth-century utilitarianism. (shrink)

Master's Dissertation -/- (Awarded Distinction from Warwick University – assessed by Professors Stephen Houlgate and Christine Battersby, 2002).

On Islamic practices, doctrines and on Islamic ethics.

Like many people these days, I believe there is no general moral obligation to obey the law. I shall explain why there is no such moral obligation – and I shall clarify what I mean when I say there is no moral obligation to obey the law – as we proceed. But also like many people, I am unhappy with a position that would say there was no moral obligation to obey the law and then say no more about the (...) law's moral significance. In our thinking about law in a resonably just society, we have a strong inclination to invest law with a sort of moral halo. It does not feel right to suggest that law is a morally neutral social fact, nor to suggest that law is merely a useful social technique. In this essay, I shall try to account in part for law's moral halo. Because I share the widespread inclination to invest law with this halo, I shall not be interested in a merely historical account of how we come to see law with a halo – a pure “error theory” of law's halo, if you will. I want to justify the halo. On the other hand, the main way to justify the halo is to get clear just what law's moral significance is. It is unlikely that at the end of the process of clarification the halo will have exactly the shape or luminance that it had at the beginning. (shrink)

P. O. Bodunrin, in his 1981 essay, asks: ‘Is there an African Philosophy, and if there is, what is it?’ This question has occupied centre stage among younger African intellectuals for about a decade now. The most articulate among these intellectuals, who are themselves philosophers, are Bodunrin , Kwasi Wiredu , H. Odera Oruka , Marcien Towa and Eboussi Boulaga , and Paulin Hountondji . These philosophers among others are in dialogue with one another and currently are seen to be (...) the principal architects of a new orientation in African thought. (shrink)

Early in Peter Abelard's Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian, the philosopher and the Christian easily come to agreement about what the point of ethics is: “[T]he culmination of true ethics … is gathered together in this: that it reveal where the ultimate good is and by what road we are to arrive there.” They also agree that, since the enjoyment of this ultimate good “comprises true blessedness,” ethics “far surpasses other teachings in both usefulness and worthiness.” (...) As Abelard understood them, both fundamental elements of his twelfth-century ethical culture — Greek philosophy and Christian religion — held a common view of the nature of ethical inquiry, one that was so obvious to them that his characters do not even state it in a fully explicit way. They take for granted, as we take the ground we stand on, the premise that the most important function of ethical theory is to tell you what sort of life is most desirable, or most worth living. That is, the point of ethics is that it is good for you, that it serves your self-interest. (shrink)

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Joseph Boyle, John Peppin, David Solomon; Christian Bioethics, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Vol.

In his book on Karl Barth Professor T. F. Torrance spoke at one point of ‘the great watershed of modern theology’. ‘There are,’ he wrote, 1 ‘two basic issues here. On the one hand, it is the very substance of the Christian faith that is at stake, and on the other hand, it is the fundamental nature of scientific method, in its critical and methodological renunciation of prior understanding, that is at stake. This is the great watershed of modern theology: (...) either we take the one way or the other – there is no third alter native… one must go either in the direction taken by Barth or in the direction taken by Bultmann.’. (shrink)

Branner, H.C. Humanismens krise.--Hansen, Martin A. Eneren og massen.

يتناول محمد حيان السمّان في كتابه في "تدبير القداسة: الحجابة والحجاب - أدب الدخول على السلطان في التراث العربي الإسلامي"، الصادر عن المركز العربي للأبحاث ودراسة السياسات، العلاقة بين السلطة السياسية والمجتمع في السياق العربي - الإسلامي، من خلال موضوع الحجابة والسلطان المحتجِب عن رعيته، والوقائع المتصلة بالقدوم على أصحاب السلطة من خلفاء وملوك وسلاطين ووزراء وغيرهم، وانتظار الإذن بلقائهم. يتألف الكتاب (407 صفحات بالقطع الوسط، موثقًا ومفهرسًا) من مدخل، وقسمين فيهما عشرة فصول. في المدخل، تأسيس وإضاءة، يعالج المؤلف مسألة (...) الحجابة والحاجب من حيث اللغة والاصطلاح، ومسألة الحجابة عند ابن خلدون من منطلق الحضارة الداعية إلى انتحال الألقاب وتمييزها، ومسألة الاستئذان الشرعي والحجابة والفرق بينهما. (shrink)

Byzantine Empire; economic and social conditions; history.

According to familiar accounts, Rousseau held that humans are actuated by two distinct kinds of self love: amour de soi, a benign concern for one's self-preservation and well-being; and amour-propre, a malign concern to stand above other people, delighting in their despite. I argue that although amour-propre can (and often does) assume this malign form, this is not intrinsic to its character. The first and best rank among men that amour-propre directs us to claim for ourselves is that of occupying (...) 'man's estate'. This does not require, indeed it precludes, subjection of others. Amour-propre does not need suppression or circumscription if we are to live good lives; it rather requires direction to its proper end, not a delusive one. (shrink)

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.; Controversies, Conflicts, and Consensus: A Concluding, Untheological Postscript, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Med.

The full range of Bentham's engagement with Blackstone's view of law is beyond the scope of a single article. Yet it is important to recognize at the outset, even in a more restricted enquiry into the matter, that the engagement, begun when Bentham, not quite sixteen years of age, started to attend Blackstone's Oxford lectures, was indeed a lifelong affair. Whatever Bentham had in mind when, at the age of eighty, in 1828, he began to write a work entitled ‘A (...) familar view of Blackstone: or say Blackstone familiarized’, the manuscripts at least suffice to prove that ‘Our Author’ was still in the forefront of his mind at that octogenarian but still indefatigably active stage of his career. Every aspect of Bentham's multifarious intellectual activity over the intervening decades had been touched in some measure by his response to Blackstone's ideas. It still seems true to say what was said a dozen years ago: It would be an exaggeration to say that Bentham elaborated his own conception of law by way of a constant and conscious dialectic with the views of Blackstone. But it would be an exaggeration for which the evidence would afford some excuse. (shrink)

al-Qism al-awwal. Fī ḍawābiṭ al-fikr (manṭiq) --.